An 18 year old's "Letter to America"
Special guest author shared with her permission
I have the privilege of pastoring a church in the small town of Deer Park, WA, where I am blessed to pray and collaborate with more than a dozen other local pastors. These twice-a-month prayer times began over 21 years ago, and are stronger today than at any time in the past.
One of the pastors who has been there since the beginning in 2005 is Pastor David Stapp of First Baptist Church. He has faithfully served his congregation and our community through the good times and some very difficult times. He is also one of my true friends. Pastor David recently shared with us a graduation assignment written by his eldest granddaughter, Ruth Stapp, who is 18. As I read her words, I could not believe the depth of insight and wisdom of this young lady as she wrote to future generations.
Ruth has given me permission to share her writing, and so I am also including it here on my Substack and will share it with the county paper I write for as well. Please read and share with other young people so they can be stirred to devote their lives to a grander purpose that can make their lives meaningful for generations to come.
Letter to America
By Ruth Stapp, April 26, 2026
Final assignment for graduation from The Patriot Institute
To: All Americans, but specifically to the future generations,
Too many tears have fallen into American soil for this generation to walk upon it thoughtlessly. Too many mothers have whispered prayers into the night, too many fathers have labored with blistered hands, too many nameless souls have denied themselves comfort so that their children might inherit stability, hope, and freedom. Those who came before us did not endure hardship merely to exist; they endured it because they believed in laying stones for something that would outlive themselves. They built with the quiet faith that their suffering might become their children’s shelter. Crossing oceans, burying loved ones, facing musket fire, and spending themselves for convictions they believed eternal.
Yet we, inheritors of their labor, often shrink even from the inconvenience of defending those same convictions in our own day. There are silent graveyards scattered across this land whose stones cry out against our indifference. Beneath them lie men and women who believed America to be something worth building, worth preserving, worth praying over. What answer shall we give them if we prove careless with the very inheritance for which they spent themselves?
“Secondhand Sacrifice”
Much of what we casually enjoy was bought with courage we ourselves have not yet been asked to show. We are living, in many respects, on secondhand sacrifice.
Before us were generations who knelt before God long before they stood before men. They understood that if this nation were to endure, it would require more than legislation — it would require virtue, restraint, repentance, and the fear of the Lord. Their prayers linger still in the memory of this land.
And yet, what a tragic contrast stands before us now. We are perhaps the most materially indulged generation ever to inhabit this republic, and yet among the least burdened by a sense of stewardship. Ours is an age trained to look inward before looking upward, to ask first what gratifies the self rather than what preserves the common good. We have become a people of shortened vision — able to speak endlessly of personal fulfillment, personal rights, personal offense, personal ambition — while scarcely pausing to consider the weight of inherited duty. The horizon of many hearts extends no farther than the mirror. We have mastered expression, but neglected obligation; we have mastered commentary, but neglected contribution.
“A nation is not preserved by spectators.”
In an era where convenience is king, sacrifice has become a foreign concept. We have grown accustomed to receiving without asking who paid, enjoying without asking what must be maintained, and criticizing without asking what must be built in its place. Apathy has disguised itself as sophistication. Detached cynicism now passes for intelligence, and indifference is too often mistaken for neutrality. Yet neutrality in the face of decline is not innocence — it is surrender. A nation is not preserved by spectators. Republics are not sustained by those content merely to observe from the safety of comfort while others bear the burden of vigilance.
There is among us a dangerous myopia, a nearsightedness of soul, that measures life only by the immediate and the personal. We ask what this country can provide for our present ease, but rarely what posterity will say of our present negligence. We debate endlessly the language of entitlement while neglecting the language of inheritance. We are quick to identify what inconveniences us, but slow to discern what obligations history has placed upon us. Such a disposition cannot build civilizations. It can only consume them. For nations do not usually collapse in one dramatic hour; more often they erode beneath generations who preferred distraction to discipline and comfort to calling.
“We are not free to be apathetic.”
Responsibility, however, is the unavoidable debt of all who inherit blessings they did not earn. To be born into liberty is not merely to enjoy its privileges, but to shoulder its maintenance. To receive the labor of praying fathers and persevering mothers is to become accountable for what one transmits onward. We are not free to be apathetic simply because former generations were diligent. Their diligence was meant to purchase us opportunity, not excuse us from duty. Indeed, the very magnitude of what we have received only deepens the seriousness of what is now required from us.
For apathy is never passive in its consequences. Though it may appear harmless in the individual heart, when multiplied across a people, it becomes a silent architect of national decay. Every principle left undefended, every truth left untaught, every institution left unguarded, every child left unformed by conviction becomes another stone loosened from the foundation. And once enough stones are neglected, collapse requires no enemy. It comes of its own weight. Thus, the question before this generation is not whether responsibility is pleasant but whether we possess enough humility to accept that history has required this of us.
“Our sacred responsibility”
So, rise, America — not in arrogance but in remembrance, not in empty nationalism but in sacred responsibility. Rise because the prayers of former generations still echo through your valleys and sanctuaries. Rise because liberty too dearly purchased must not be cheaply surrendered. Rise because history has now placed into our hands what John Adams said our fathers bought “at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.” Let it not be said that when our turn came, we preferred comfort to calling. Let it rather be said that this generation remembered the old paths, recovered the ancient courage, and passed the torch onward, still burning brightly beneath the favor of Almighty God.
With hope for what is to come, remembrance for what has passed, and boldness facing today, onward we are called. And onward we proceed.
By Ruth Stapp, (18 years old), April 26, 2026
My closing thought:
As Miss Stapp so well articulates, the freedoms we enjoy came at a price we have not even come close to paying. May we lay aside our “secondhand sacrifice” and be the Salt and Light that Jesus calls us to be, and that our children and grandchildren’s generations deserve from us, the stewards of a sacred gift of liberty. It is our turn, and we must not fail them.